C / O Berlin

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C / O Berlin in the America House
C / O Berlin in America House (2014)

C / O Berlin is an exhibition house for photography in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg . Changing exhibitions by international photographers are shown on around 2500 m² of space in the listed Amerika-Haus and supplemented by artist talks, lectures, workshops, seminars and guided tours.

The non-profit, operational foundation established under civil law in 2013 is intended to express initiative and flexibility. The Care of as a postal abbreviation for busy and geographically independent, internationally active people is supplemented by the Taking care of the private engagement.

history

founding

Until 2004, West Berlin had no state cultural institution dedicated exclusively to the medium of photography. On the occasion of this situation, the photographer Stephan Erfurt, the designer Marc Naroska and the architect Ingo Pott decided to found a private exhibition space for photographic art independent of institutional structures. They put this idea into practice in 2000 with a retrospective by the Magnum photo agency and showed the temporary exhibition for three months in the former Postfuhramt in Berlin-Mitte. Due to the public success - a total of 30,000 visitors - the three exhibition organizers decided to continue the spontaneous initiative and collaboration. An exhibition by Martin Parr followed at the same location.

Line road

As the Deutsche Post, as the owner of the Postfuhramt, was planning to sell the building, it de-leased it at the beginning of 2001. C / O Berlin found new rooms in a former foundry building at Linienstraße 144 in Berlin-Mitte to continue its exhibition activities. Until 2006, C / O Berlin presented works by René Burri , Barbara Klemm , Tom Wood , Margaret Bourke-White , Gilles Peress , James Nachtwey and other photographers on up to four floors of around 1,000 m². During this time, the three founders expanded both the team and the organization in terms of contemporary cultural management as well as the program by implementing new formats such as lectures , juniors and young talent . C / O Berlin quickly developed into a permanent address for photography in Berlin.

Postfuhramt

At the beginning of 2006, Deutsche Post sold the Postfuhramt to a private investor. The founders of C / O Berlin were able to convince him to temporarily rent part of the building to C / O Berlin. In June 2006, C / O Berlin relocated its exhibitions back to the Postfuhramt. Over the next seven years, C / O Berlin showed exhibitions by photographers such as Annie Leibovitz , Thomas Hoepker , Nan Goldin , Robert Mapplethorpe , Bettina Rheims , Alec Soth , Leonard Freed , Larry Clark , Arnold Newman , Sibylle Bergemann , Peter on 1,800 m² Lindbergh , Gregory Crewdson and other artists. C / O Berlin expanded its activities to include the youth program Teens, the Book Days, the Photography Days and concerts between pop and classical music, and thanks to its internationality, size and variety of programs, it has become one of the most important exhibition venues for photography in Germany.

In the search for long-term usable rooms, C / O Berlin checked a total of over 70 alternative locations in Berlin from the end of 2009. The former Jewish girls' school in Auguststrasse and the former studio houses of the Weißensee art college in Monbijoupark were shortlisted . After the Jewish community canceled in December 2010, C / O Berlin concentrated on the studio buildings that were located in the Berlin-Mitte district. The district council meeting (BVV) of the district decided unanimously in September 2011 that C / O Berlin may use and expand the building ensemble from autumn 2012. As a result, C / O Berlin, together with the architectural office pott architects, designed options for short-term temporary use and long-term use of the area.

In the summer of 2012 it became public that the decision of the district council center lacked the legal basis. Due to an existing, valid development plan, the buildings de facto existed, but de jure not, so that C / O Berlin was not allowed to renovate or use the studio buildings. At the same time, the Postfuhramt was sold again - to the Berlin medical technology company Biotronik . It became apparent that the interim use of the Postfuhramt by C / O Berlin would come to an end in the following months. On March 8, 2013, the foundation finally closed its exhibition space in the Postfuhramt.

America house

America house

With the help of the Berlin cultural administration, C / O Berlin was awarded the contract on December 12, 2012 to use the Amerika-Haus in Charlottenburg, which is owned by the city of Berlin, as a new location for the next 21 years from 2014 . The second tenant of the house is the Berlin State Center for Political Education . After extensive renovation work, for which the foundation received around 2.5 million euros u. a. invested via crowdfunding , C / O Berlin opened its exhibition activities in the new rooms on October 30, 2014. For this purpose, the building was refurbished according to plans and under the direction of Kahlfeldt Architects and expanded according to international museum standards.

C / O Berlin has 2500 m² available in the Amerika-Haus and can therefore use more space than in the past. The foundation also hopes to benefit from the proximity to thematically related institutions. The Museum of Photography and the Helmut Newton Foundation are on the opposite side of Jebensstrasse .

Exhibitions

Up to 15 exhibitions are held annually. In recent years, the works of internationally renowned photographers such as Annie Leibovitz , Pierre et Gilles , Edward Burtynsky , Leonard Freed , Bettina Rheims , Sebastião Salgado , Martin Parr , Thomas Hoepker , James Nachtwey , Anton Corbijn , Robert Mapplethorpe , Karl Lagerfeld , See Weegee and Peter Lindbergh . In 2012 the exhibition center presented Zeitlos Schön - 100 years of fashion photography from Man Ray to Mario Testino , and in 2015 for the first time works by Lore Krüger .

A total of 78 exhibitions in the first eleven years attracted 870,000 visitors. On the occasion of the reopening in the Amerika Haus, an extensive exhibition was opened as part of a grand opening .

Lectures

Current positions and questions from the fields of photography, design and architecture are presented and discussed in up to four moderated discussions per year. In the past, Daniel Libeskind , René Burri , Isabelle Huppert , Jeff Wall , Karl Lagerfeld and Juergen Teller gave insight into their work, personal experiences and views.

Promotion of young talent

Since 2006, C / O Berlin has been organizing an annual international competition for young contemporary photography and art criticism under the title Talents . The annual solo exhibition is accompanied by an exhibition catalog. Thanks to cooperation with the Goethe Institutes worldwide, Talents has also been shown in Stockholm, New York, Wellington and Santiago de Chile so far. The winners of recent years include Tobias Zielony, Pepa Hristova and Stephen Waddell.

Under the title Junior , workshops for children are offered several times a year, which deal with topics from the fields of photography, architecture and design.

The Perspectives program for children and young people in socially disadvantaged situations began in 2015 - on site in children's and youth homes and welcome classes as well as in the Education Unit at C / O Berlin.

Web links

Commons : C / O Berlin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Project C / O Berlin. 2015, accessed November 16, 2019 .
  2. ^ Christiane Meixner: C / O Berlin - Something becomes visible. Tagesspiegel , October 26, 2014, accessed on September 14, 2015 .
  3. ↑ C / O Berlin in figures  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 37 kB) on co-berlin.info. January 11, 2012@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.co-berlin.info  
  4. ↑ Grand Opening 2014. 2014, accessed in 2015 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 24 ″  N , 13 ° 19 ′ 50 ″  E